Thursday, March 7, 2013

H.F.O.T.B.Y

What you do:
The greek yogurt is really quite simple, its just a fancy name for strained yogurt.

Our setup

What I do is start with four quarts of our homemade yogurt. When strained it condenses to about two quarts.

To strain the yogurt, I use a clean cheese cloth, a colander, and a bowl to catch the whey. Line the colander with the cheese cloth and place the bowl under the colander. Depending on the size of your colander you may not be able to fit all four quarts in at once, that's okay. Pour in as much yogurt as fits, and after it strains for a while you should be able to add the rest.
Let it drain until you like the thickness of the yogurt, then put the strained yogurt in a bowl and add sweetener and vanilla to taste.
But don't throw out the whey! It can be used for a plethera of things.

For the thickened fruit I start with:
3 cups of your chosen fruit, fresh or frozen
1/8 to a 1/4 cup of water ( depending on how juicy the fruit is)
2 teaspoons of Arrowroot powder
Optional: sweetener to taste

In a saucepan, stir together the fruit, water and arrowroot powder over medium heat. The mixture should be cloudy and as the Arrowroot powder cooks, it will thicken and turn clear.
When that happens, take the pan off the heat and let it cool.

Assembly:

For the yogurt cups we use jelly jars. The last batch filled 12 jars but will vary depending on how much you fill them and how much you strained the yogurt.
I used a cookie scoop to measure the fruit, and an ice cream scoop for the yogurt.
Three scoops of fruit and two scoops of yogurt worked well for us, having a little fruit left over.
Keep in the fridge and enjoy!

I'd tell you how long they last but frankly I don't know, our family eats them all within a few days :)